Analysis of Synergies in Indian Corporate M&A Deals: A Logit Regression Approach

A firm's financial attributes play an essential part in the merger decision. The present paper attempts to improve the existing literature on assessing M&A activity in Indian corporate. The primary objective is to analyse 1) When synergies are gained, payment is made in cash, 2) When synergies are gained, M&A activity takes place in the related industries. The paper has analysed 20 major M&A deals which took place between 2010 and 2015 for the Indian Corporates. The data includes three year pre-merger , year of merger and three year post merger i.e. a total of seven year data for each deal has been used in the study effectively from 2007 to 2018. Random Effect Logit Regression has been applied to estimate the relationship. The major results derived from the analysis suggest that EBITDA has statistically significant relation with payment dummy as well as Industry relatedness. Statistically significant results have also been observed for Free Cash flow. Asset Turnover has also shown to have a significant relationship with relatedness of industry in our model. The results supports both the hypothesis of the study i.e. “When synergies are gained, cash mode of payment is preferred.” and “When synergies are gained, mergers & acquisition in related industry sector are preferred”.